


The Land Before Time (Stranded)

by blueincandescence



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-15 21:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12329247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueincandescence/pseuds/blueincandescence
Summary: Steve takes a trip through time. Again.For the WonderTrev drabble-thon on Tumblr. The prompt was: "October 10th: Stranded."





	The Land Before Time (Stranded)

**The Land Before Time**

(Stranded)

 

i.

His brain’s way of catching up to his body is to conjure a vortex, flashing lights, shouting. In reality, traveling through time with Barry Allen is there-one-minute-here-the-next. No time to process the void between then-and-now. Steve Trevor would know. He’s done it twice now.

This time when he drops to his hands and knees he sinks into white sand. Barry clamps him on the back, and Steve cranes to look up at the kid, bedecked in red, surveying their surroundings — which to Steve look oversaturated and overbright and so vivid he can’t call any one thing into focus. “Yeah,” Barry says, more to himself, “Diana would call this safe. Yeah.” He looks down at Steve. “Gotta go. Timestop villains are sort of my thing.” He’s gone in a — well.

His sputtered protests to no one are Steve’s way of making himself feel better. He heaves onto his back, head cradled on soft sand.

The rectangle in his pocket prods his leg, reminding him he has a map and a long-range telephone at his fingertips. Everyone he knows has been dead for at least fifty years, but it would be nice to know where he is. He presses all the buttons he remembers. Curses.

Sitting up to look out into the expansive clear blue sea, a sense of deja vu comes over him. He looks back expecting a platoon of warrior women aiming arrows at his head from the ridge. Instead, he sees lush vegetation. The trees are enormous and thin with willowy leaves Steve can’t place from any of his travels.

A screech breaks the midday silence. A flapping sound. For a moment, immense wings block the sun. One hand shielding his eyes, Steve tracks the impossible creature’s flight. In a pitch usually reserved for church or home runs, the only man on the planet murmurs, “Eat your heart out, Jules Verne.”

Then he runs.

 

ii.

Shelter first, water second, food third. The principles of wilderness survival apply even sixty-five million years in the past, give or take a millennium. Steve sets up in a mountain crevice not much bigger than he is near a stream too shallow for the locals to bother with. The locals are dinosaurs.

It’s all a big mistake, but it makes sense in that illogical sort of way he’s gotten used to since a demi-goddess plucked him from the sea. Steve and Barry had been marathoning the _Jurassic Park_ series in the private theater at Wayne Manor when a lightning storm broke out right over their pile of pizza boxes. Voice of doom, string of threats. Diana splintered open the door, and it was lightning versus lightning. The last thing Steve remembers is Diana checking him over for injuries and kissing him before ordering Barry to get him somewhere safe.

It had been a Tuesday. Steve doesn’t know why, but Barry thinks it’s funniest when things like this happen on Tuesdays. By the tally Steve scratches into the wall of his newest home, that was two Tuesdays ago and counting. He doesn’t know much about timestop villains or the Justice League or the twenty-first century in general, but the fact that he’s still stranded in the Cretaceous Period is a pretty good indicator that something went wrong — or is going wrong. Will go wrong?

Semantics aside, this is bad. He’s worried sick missing Diana. He’s very low on the food chain. Objectively, this is bad.

On the other hand, nothing has beeped at him. Or honked. Or demanded to know if he prefers paper or plastic. Or looked at him like he’s a lost puppy or an answer to a prayer — he’s both, and it’s a lot of pressure.

There are hardships in the land before time, and Steve has a pointy stick and several well-weighted rocks to take care of them.

 

iii.

Six weeks in, Steve longs for the beeping. No, the air conditioning. That’s what he misses most. No, private pools and bikini swimsuits and the way Diana fills them out. The way Diana does anything. He dreams of her and talks to her and longs for her. He thinks he sees her, one morning, out on patrol.

Steve has been tracking a herd of triceratopses. He petted a baby that wandered into his camp last week. He can’t bear the idea of the Tyrannosaurus rex living deep in the valley getting at it. Steve has set up strategic bundles of food in an attempt to lure the small herd toward the beach. What he doesn’t anticipate is the other herds moving in, though he should have. Everyone likes a free lunch. The T-rex is no exception.

Shaking trees would have been a clear warning for Steve had he not been distracted by what he could have sworn was the glint of the sun off silver bracers and a dark head looking up and down the beach. On the wind, he almost makes out his name.

The T-rex roars. The first time Steve stood beside an airplane engine, he pegged it as the loudest noise he’d ever hear. That was before he had a bomb drop on him, of course. The T-rex is ten times louder. And angrier.

Steve knows by now where to run for safety. But the triceratops herds are stampeding in all directions to get away from the T-rex’s clamping teeth. One bite is enough to kill a smaller triceratops. The T-rex lifts it as it shakes its bloody jaws in triumph.

(Later, Diana will tell Steve she heard him scream. He’ll think about denying it but won’t bother. Because, good Lord above, there is nothing scarier than a T-rex gone full apex predator.)

So, yeah, he screams. The T-rex stops thrashing, noticing a new sound, a new scent in the air. Steve has been meticulous about bathing but nostrils the size of dinner plates flare all the same. He stands stock still like the movie taught him.

(Later, Barry will stare at him in horror and say, “Dude, no.”)

In the moment, slitted eyes lock right on Steve. The T-rex drops the triceratops carcass and starts forward. Steve abandons his strategy in favor of a hundred-foot drop off the side of the ridge.

Diana hits him like the most beautiful truck on Earth. Steve clings to her even after she sets him down on the beach. They grip each other’s faces. He’s gotten used to his beard. It seems to horrify Diana, or at least the implication of it does: “This didn’t grow in an hour.” Diana hugs Steve so hard his laugh becomes a wheeze.

The T-rex stands on the edge of the ridge — its weight sending huge chunks of rock crashing toward the beach — and splits every ear in the vicinity.

Diana glares at it. “Did that beast hurt you, Steve Trevor?”

“No, no. I was worried about the baby triceratops — ”

“Baby?” A fierce expression settles onto her face. “I will handle this.”

Sand kicks up under her boots as she takes a running start. She leaves the ground with the force of a cannonball, one fist raised in the air. The T-rex opens its throat and Diana socks it under the jaw mid-roar. A second hit sends it staggering over the edge of the ridge. It lands with a bone-shattering thud, a threat to baby triceratopses no more.

Steve yells and whoops and calls out to Diana.

“What?” she calls back on her descent, one finger fiddling with her ear.

“You punched a dinosaur,” Steve repeats, “I love you!”

 

iv.

Three nights later, they huddle by a driftwood fire munching on T-rex kebabs and licking the grease from each other’s chins. T-rex tastes like Angus steak. Diana tastes like paradise. She wears nothing but his frayed button-down, he his tattered pants. Neither stays clothed for long.

They are the first human beings on Earth to ever make love. They reinvent it anew each time.

Naked in an ocean of stars, Steve floats with an arm and leg wrapped around Diana’s. The stars above are so bright it’s like Steve has never seen the night sky before. In a way he never has. Pollution doesn’t exist yet. The air is crisp, and Diana drags him over to fill his lungs with it.

“God, I love playing Adam and Eve with you,” he confesses between kisses.

Even with the stars and their distant campfire, it’s so dark Steve feels more than sees a grin spread across Diana’s face. He feels it hesitate. “So, it’s the modern world you’re not so comfortable with. Not — ”

“No, Diana. Don’t even say it. I — ” He smooths back her wet hair, kisses her wet mouth. “I am so in love with you.”

The grin comes back. “Because I punch dinosaurs.”

“It’s a long list,” Steve assures her.

They kiss and slide their slippery skin along each other’s bodies. Diana strokes his hair and his beard. “This is perfect,” she murmurs, forehead on his nose. “But Barry will come back for us soon, I’m sure of it. I don’t want you to be unhappy.”

Steve protests, “I wasn’t unhappy.”

“You slept fifteen hours a day and never wanted to leave the Manor.”

“I was overwhelmed,” he admits. “And — as weird as it sounds — I needed to be stranded in time t-to take a breath. I came back from the dead? But I never died. And there’s TV now. I just —  ” Steve clings to Diana, wishing he could take back everything he’d done to suck the joy out of their reunion, to make amends for what he couldn’t help. “It wasn’t you, I swear on my life, Diana. I needed time.”

After a considering pause, Diana says, "I see. Then I’m glad you had this time that you needed." She presses a trembling kiss between his eyes. "Would you like to know what's on my list of reasons?" His nod is probably too eager, but she doesn't laugh at him. With sincerity, she says, "I love you, Steve Trevor, because you are my survivor.”

They float together, Steve and Diana. Two people stranded out of time who have been gifted more of it than they ever thought possible.


End file.
